April 5, 2014

And apparently, the answer is yes, it is too much to ask. I mean, look: I understand that the NRSC is an incumbent-protection club. That’s basically its job. But to introduce baseless charges of neo-Confederate racism in a GOP primary is beyond inept. Honestly, if you can’t find a real, instead of imagined, problem with a primary challenger then tout the virtues of your guy. And if your guy doesn’t have any virtues to tout that would be better than a baseless charge of neo-Confederate racism, then maybe just keep your mouth shut.

Good grief. You want party unity, don’t falsely tar fellow Republicans, and their grassroots supporters, as racists. Are you trying to get people to stay home in November?

First, let's remember the name Brad Dayspring. Eventually we'll have a majority within the GOP caucus and at that point it'll be useful to remember who's on the "unethnical crony must-fire" list.

Second, of course they're trying to get people to stay home. They'd prefer to have control of the Senate than not, but keeping control of the party is far more important to them. Hence the attacks on tea party candidates who win the primaries (often simultaneous with appeals to party unity and respecting the outcomes of primaries when the establishment candidate does win).

We talk about winning primaries, but equally important is seizing the day-to-day apparatus of the party. The staffer positions that can make or break a campaign, and that provide the feed stock for senior policy positions later.

Won't quibble over the idea having a white supremacist involved in ANY political endeavor is a singularly bad idea.

However, I do quibble with the label "neoconfederate" being used in a perjorative fashion, and wonder what this dumba$$ would have to say were H. K. Edgerton to show up on his doorstep to discuss exactly how Maj. Theodore Winthrop met his demise and exactly who among the Wythe Rifles fired that shot at Hampton, VA.

Instead of bashing the NRSC for this, should't we be asking why any group would want the Confederate Depot as part of your rally? I don't care how pro-gun they are, once you read what they are about you kindly decline their participation. Too many of these groups have already infiltrated and associated themselves with tea party organizations, which has turned away many who were on board with the original fiscally conservative stance.

It would have taken one of McDaniel's staff about five minutes to look at the list of participants at the rally and determined that Pace Confederate Depot was not an organization you want to be associated with. Acting like this was some sort underhanded attack on McDaniels by the NRSC lets him off the hook for his own poor judgement, and allows such groups to tag on to the GOP to our own detriment.

Do you seriously want to vet everyone selling t-shirts in the vendor's hall for their political opinions? At every and any campaign event?

I have no truck with neo-confederates, and even less if (as alleged) the vendor is a racist... but you do realize that won't end with racists being barred from vending products at events, right? If someone who sold t-shirts had donated to Proposition 8, the offending tweet from the NRSC would have claimed that he had "associated with homophobes and gay-bashers". If we kick out the marriage supporter, another vendor might have subscribed to Ron Paul's newsletter and so the NRSC would have denounced the candidate as "associating with anti-semites and gold bugs".

Campaigns of intimidation don't end with something that sounds reasonable to you. They just keep going.

(And yes, it was an underhanded attack. It would have been unfair and nasty from an opponent. Fromt the national Republican party - this candidate's own party - it was mindbendingly inept or blatantly self-serving or both.)

So we're supposed to believe that guilt by association should disqualify someone from our votes, yet we're supposed to vote for Thad Cochran who hangs with some of the slimiest people in this country: our politicians. Got it, Brad.

When fundraisers call from the NRSC, NRC, and NRCC I explain that I will give them nothing as long as the guys in Washington see fit to call us names, question our motives, and attack us with straw men.

If our views distress them so much, I'd hate to distress them further by giving them money. I mean, they might feel somewhat conflicted when they spit in our face again.

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